Well my last entry was brief, so here’s what’s happened since my last real post.
Wednesday I took the day off from work since there wasn’t much for me to do. I didn’t do much that day, slept in a little, surfed the web for a while, made some cookies, I was mostly depressed all day for whatever reason. I think I was just stressed out, and nervous about becoming a home owner, and I really wasn’t looking forward to moving. My neck hurt too, which was frustrating, it had been hurting since monday.
Thursday morning we slept in a bit, then headed out to the title company where we were closing at. Got there a little after 11, closing was at 11:30. A representative or two from each side of the deal was there, adding up to about 8 of us in the conference room, and then they found some problems. Apparently some miscommunication between a couple of the companies led to a numbers problem which needed to be worked out before settlement could be final. They were all running around making phonecalls sending and recieving faxes, shuffling papers. The lawyer from the relocation company ended up signing what he needed to sign and leaving an hour into it.
We finally closed at 3:00. Now closings aren’t supposed to take this long of course, but everyone (after the nasty lawyer left) there had a good sense of humor about it all, and they were willing to work hard to get the deal we had planned on. In the end they found a way to fix everything, so we got everything that we expected.
We then drove up to Skippack, stopped at a little pizzeria there that we were familiar with, and brought a pizza up to the house. We were happy to find that the real estate company (seller) had plowed the driveway like our realtor had asked, but we were a little annoyed that they didn’t bother to clear off the walkway. Still, we had a nice lunch/dinner in the livingroom of our empty new house. We took the chance to walk around the house, check out things, plan painting (it all goes to white!), and poke all sorts of things. It was a great evening.
Friday we went to work. Afterwards we headed to the Home Depot and bought a nice metal shovel and a 40 pound bag of salt, stopped at Michael’s mother’s to pick up our cleaning supplies, then headed up to the house, by the time we got up there it was dark out. The walkway turned out to be more trouble than we thought, about 3 inches of compacted snow and about a half inch of solid ice at the bottom. The compacted snow could be scraped away eventually, but the ice was causing problems. After trying to shovel for a little bit we decided that we were just too tired to do the cleaning that we wanted to do, and we wanted to save our energy for Saturday, when we were planning on moving all the big stuff. We headed back to Mom’s, got there a little after 9, cooked up a couple boca pizzas for dinner and then I fell asleep while Michael was watching a show on the History Channel.
Saturday I got up around 10, wandered around for a while, had some breakfast, went into the basement to try and arrange some boxes to move. When Michael got up we started bringing small and light boxes upstairs that we could bring over first, since we planned to work on the ice/snow issue more before moving the big stuff, it would have been too dangerous otherwise. We headed up to the house around noon. Got there and work was being done on our new hot water heater, no water! So I cleaned out the fireplace, and started cleaning the kitchen. We took turns hacking away at the ice and snow outside, used up the 40 pound bag of salt in no time. Eventually the water was turned back on, but only cold, at least I was able to wash my hands after all that cleaning. Then it started getting dark, it was after 4, so we wouldn’t be able to get to the truck rental place in time to rent a truck even if we did want to do the move in the dark. So after a bit more cleaning we headed out to get some dinner, and then went back to Mom’s, I went to bed.
Sunday morning I got up around 8:30. Grabbed a bit of breakfas
t, took a shower, went downstairs to survey what we had to move. Unfortunately through this all I still had that neck ache, which seemed to actually be just a knot in my shoulder muscle on the left side. I REALLY wasn’t looking forward to moving! But this is the last move… and we’re moving into our new house! Those thoughts helped, a little. By 11:30 we had a truck in the driveway and started to load it up. Big things first, the desk, the couch, all sorts of heavy things, and with the slush the truck was pretty slippery, luckily none of us fell. Michael’s mother helped too, despite our protest, and although it was exhausting and required two breaks, we got it all loaded up by about 2. Michael’s mother kept offering the help of her boyfriend and his son, and we kept refusing, but finally before we left to drive up, she offered once more (they live in nearby Limerick) and we decided to give in and let them help us. I’m so glad we did. We got up there a little after 3, and within an hour the truck was unloaded and everything was in the house. In the beginning I helped moving things inside from the truck, but after a few boxes I resolved to stay in the house and keep the livingroom clear, so 3 boxes come in, and I disperse them to the bedrooms and laundry room so they wouldn’t have to walk all over the place, just come in and drop the boxes off. It all worked out pretty good. They were able to bring in the desk and the couch much more gracefully than just Michael and I could have, and faster. By the end we were all pretty tired, my upper back was killing me. I decided to stay at the house and do more cleaning while the guys drove the truck back.
While we were bringing everything in a couple contracters were doing a bit of work in the house. The hot water was turned back on by the time we got there, and they were laying the firebricks inside the fireplace when we got there, it looked great! They then went to the upstairs and removed the problematic insulation. Everyone left around the same time, and I was alone in the new house. I got a bunch of cleaning done, was able to put a lot of stuff away in the kitchen and bathroom, made the bed (and resisted the temptation to take a nap in it).
And then a bad thing happened.
When taking stuff off the counter I noticed a lot of water, I assumed this was all because many of the cardboard boxes on the counter had been sitting on the bottom of the truck, and had gotten a little slushy, or had picked up snow somewhere between the truck and the house. When I turned on the faucet it sputtered a little, but the contracter said that was because there was still air in the pipes from the water being shut off. So I had everything dry, I turned on the faucet, and noticed water leaking out of the base! Ah! I dried it up and then looked in the cabinet under the sink, more water! I removed everything from the cabinet and dried up as much water as I could. Then I wrapped a towel around the faucet, hoped it wasn’t a big problem, and waited for Michael to get home. Hopefully it’s just some little broken piece that can be replaced easily, and I don’t think the problem has existed long enough to cause any water damage, but still… ugh!
We went out for dinner when Michael got home, the same pizzeria we had gone to the previous night, and on thursday. Then we went back home, it was about 9 by then. I was exhausted, but Michael needed his jeans washed so we decided to try out our new washer and drier. First we noticed a bit of a sewage smell, not bad, but it was noticable, and we looked at the water connecting pipes, held together by duct tape, and decided that something needed to be done about that. Probably the sort of trap used in sinks so the smell doesn’t come up the sink, but water can go down. Bleh. Then we noticed that the faucet feeding into the washer was leaking a little, not bad enough to be serious, but still… *groan*
I guess these sorts of small problems are to be expected, and luckily these should be simple fixes.
And now it’s Monday, we’re at work. I ache a lot,
that small knot in my shoulder has turned into a monster that spans my whole upper back! Ouch %) When this day is over I’m going to go home, clean the bathtub really good, and take a nice long bath.
I am happy to be all moved into the house. It was so nice sleeping in our own bed in our own house! And it really is everything that we wanted, I keep getting excited about the littlest most obvious things, like the fact that we have a garage, or the tile floor in the bathroom. It all may seem silly to people who haven’t purchased their own home, but this is a huge thing, and I’m very glad I can be happy about it, very glad we didn’t need to make any comprimises.
Man, I’m tired. *wanders off*